534 LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



would amount only to the Method of Agreement, and could not prove 

 causation until confirmed by the more conclusive evidence of the 

 Method of Difference. If the question be whether Belief is a mere 

 case of close association of ideas, it would be necessary to examine 

 experimentally if it be true that any ideas whatever, provided they are 

 associated together with the required degiee of closeness, are suffi- 

 cient to give rise to belief If the inquiry be into the origin of moral 

 feelings, the feelings for example of moral reprobation, the first step 

 must be to compare all the varieties of actions or states of mind which 

 are ever morally disapproved, and see whether in all these cases it can 

 be shown that the action or state of mind had become connected by 

 association, in the disapproving mind, with some particular class of 

 hateful or disgusting ideas ; and the method employed is, thus far, that 

 of Agreement. But this is not enough. Supposing this proved, we 

 must try further, by the Method of Difference, whether this particular 

 kind of hateful or disgusting ideas, when it becomes associated with an 

 action previously indifferent, will render that action a subject of moral 

 disapproval. If this question can be answered in the affirmative, it is 

 shown to be a law of the human mind, that an association of that par- 

 ticular description is the generating cause of moral reprobation. But 

 these experiments have either never been tried, or never with the de- 

 gree of precision indispensable for conclusiveness ; and, considering 

 the difficulty of accurate experimentation upon the human mind, it will 

 probably be long before they are so. 



i It is further to be remembered, that even if all which this theory of 

 mental phenomena contends for could be proved, we should not be the 

 more enabled to resolve the laws of the more complex feelings into 

 those of the simpler ones. The generation of one class of mental 

 '.phenomena from another, whenever it can be made out, is a highly 

 interesting fact in psychological chemistry ; but it no more supersedes 

 jthe necessity of an experimental study of the generated phenomenon, 

 than a knowledge of the properties of oxygen and sulphur enables us 

 to deduce those of sulphuric acid without specific observation and ex- 

 periment. Whatever, therefore, may be the final issue of the attempt 

 to account for the origin of our judgments, our desires, or our volitions, 

 jfrom simpler mental phenomena, it is not the less imperative to ascer- 

 !tain the sequences of the complex phenomena themselves, by special 

 study in conformity to the canons of Induction. Thus, in respect of 

 Belief, the psychologist will always have to inquire, what beliefs we 

 have intuitively, and according to what laws one belief produces 

 another ; what are the laws in virtue of which one thing is recognized 

 by the mind, either rightly or erroneously, as e\ddence of another 

 , thing. In regai'd to Desire, he will examine what objects we desire 

 naturally, and by what causes we are made to desire things originally 

 indifferent or even disagreeable to us ; and so forth. It may be re- 

 marked, that the general laws of association prevail among these more 

 intricate states of mind, in the same manner as among the simpler 

 ones. A desire, an emotion, an idea of the higher order of abstrac- 

 tion, even our judgments and volitions when they have become habitual, 

 are called up by association, according to precisely the same laws as 

 our simple ideas. 



§ 4. In the course of these inquiries it will be natural and necessary 



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